The Joy of Dance – A Brief History of Salsa@Cal
Salsa@Cal was founded in 2009 by dancers in the Cal Ballroom who branched off to start a new club with more on social dancing and Latin music. The new club’s first major accomplishment was the signature DeCal, which started gaining momentum with the student population in 2011. The successful design of the DeCal by the 2011 Salsa@Cal board continues to provide the foundation for the popular class that continues to bring the joy of salsa dancing to hundreds of UC Berkeley students.
As student demand for the DeCal and salsa instruction continued to grow, Salsa@Cal started to offer dance socials with drop-in lessons for the UC Berkeley community in 2013. The socials continued to grow, as did the community’s desire to continue to learn and improve their dancing skills. The demand for more accessible lessons lead to the creation of the Open Práctica in 2014 series providing organized drop-in dance classes for the entire UC Berkeley community. In the last years, Open Práctica has continued to grow from solely beginner lessons to beginner and intermediate lessons that incorporate the many dances in Salsa@Cal’s portfolio.
As Salsa@Cal dancers continued to grow their dancing skills, they felt the desire to express their joy of dancing in choreographed performances. This lead to the foundation of the Salsa@Cal performance teams in 2015. While the original performance team was discontinued a year later, Salsa@Cal currently has a Latin Fusion Performance Team choreographed and run by Kathy Reyes.
Nobody knows exactly how Salsa@Cal will continue to evolve in the future, but we can say one thing for certain: Our joy of dancing never ends! We will consistently aim to bring bigger and better events to campus in order to teach as many people as possible.
We are a student group acting independently of the University of California. We take full responsibility for our organization and this web site.